Silence of the daughter

ANOTHER birthday for Sir Anthony Hopkins, who has just turned 78.

Another year without contact between Sir Anthony Hopkins and his daughter

Yet it’s another year with no reconciliation between the Oscar-winner and his daughter Abigail.

The Welsh-born star, who walked out when Abigail was just 14 months old, had wanted to “make up for mistakes” but is now resigned that there won’t be a happy ending for him and his only child.

Six years ago Hopkins said the one wish he wanted to fulfil in his personal life was to see his daughter but his efforts to restore relations with Abigail, now 47, came to nothing.

After Hopkins left her mother Peta Barker to set up home with production assistant Jenni Lynton, Abigail was brought up in Putney, South-west London, with little contact with her father.

She was treated for drug addiction and laid responsibility for her problems at her father’s door, saying: “I came very close to killing myself. The root cause was that my father and I had an intermittent relationship.”

When she began working as an actress under the name Abigail Harrison, she contacted Hopkins, who described their meeting as “earth moving”.

He secured her cameos in two of his films, Shadowlands and The Remains Of The Day, but relations soon became strained.

Now, to friends who suggest that it may be worth one last effort with Abigail, Hopkins sighs that “there’s too much water under the bridge”.

Observes one family chum: “Sadly, the trouble is that they’re both very stubborn. Besides, Tony is settled in LA now and Abigail has her own life as a singer in Britain.”

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Sir Anothony Hopkins daughter, Abigail

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Hopkins, who was born in Port Talbot where his father was a baker, has put the blame for his difficulties as a parent on his own upbringing, saying that being sent away early to a boarding school deprived him of any “idea of family loyalty”.

Then there was the matter of Hopkins’s legendary carousing. Before he became teetotal in 1975 he would get through a bottle of tequila a day.

He suffered from depression and wasn’t, he admits, “a very pleasant person”.

He has spoken publicly once about his daughter, saying: “I guess we are estranged. I don’t think she wants to know very much. Life is life. You get on with it.”

For her part, Abigail Harrison has observed only: “I have found having a famous parent difficult. Changing my name was a kind of shield.”

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Ringo Starr didn’t miss a beat when dismissing online chatter that he will join Sir Paul McCartney for a reunion tour to mark the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ last tour.

“We’re not going on the road, it’s not going to happen,” drawls Ringo.

We’re not going on the road, it’s not going to happen

Ringo Starr

The doleful percussionist, 75, has, however, booked a summer tour for his All Starr Band, although he admits it’s hard work filling venues.

“The object is to attract a younger following, because most of my audience is as old as me and they’re disappearing. They don’t go out as much and they literally pass away.”

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It’s a new year start for Calum Best, who came perilously close to stumbling down the path of excess taken by his footballer father George, who died from liver failure in 2005 at the age of 59.

All those nights of falling out of clubs clutching a floozy in one hand and a bottle of Smirnoff in the other are a thing of the past for Calum, 34, who is now embracing fitness and has opened the first of what he plans will be a chain of gyms.

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Calum Best

His exercise studio just happens to be next to a gym in Henley, Oxfordshire, run by his mother Angie, who says: “I’m so happy that Calum has gone down my route of health and fitness instead of his dad’s. Exercise can cure so many ills.”

Adds Calum: “I spent a lot of time partying but now I train daily. Having my own gym is pretty cool.”

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Never mind whether the BBC’s War And Peace does justice to the book, let’s get to the key issue of how TUPPENCE MIDDLETON got her name (she’s the one who plays the seductive minx Helene Kuragin, who has a rather too cosy relationship with her brother Anatole).

“Tuppence is what my grandma called my mother as a little girl and my parents decided to call me it,” chirrups the Bristol-born actress, 28.

BBC

Tuppence Middleton as Helene Kuragin

“I haven’t met another one – people remember it.”

But is this twinkly thespian aware that Tuppence is also a euphemism for a lady’s fru-fru?

“Er, I became aware of that when I went to drama school,” she says, giggling.

“A guy from up north told me. When I informed my mum, she said, ‘Oh, sorry, darling. I had no idea!’”

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Former Hollyoaks star Jennifer Metcalfe likes her men cuddly, so she hasn’t chivvied her boyfriend Greg Lake on to a New Year diet.

“I like a man with a tummy,” the Bradford-born actress tells me.

Not that Jennifer, 32, is any slouch when it comes to her own figure – she can’t be really, as an ambassador for the diet company LighterLife.

“The idea of settling down with Greg and having babies makes me tingle with excitement,” coos the curvy brunette, who has been holidaying with her man in Dubai.

But Jen won’t be proposing to actor Greg this leap year.

She giggles: “Heck, no. I don’t want to do everything too soon and have nothing to look forward to.”

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Jamie Oliver is all mouth, but certainly no trousers when it comes to physical pain.

The campaigning chef, 40, admits: “I had my blood taken not so long ago and I woke up on the floor with my legs in the air and alarms going off and nurses running around out of breath.

"Mentally, I can take a bit of grief but I’m pathetic physically.”

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It’s taken Jeremy Piven some time but at the age of 50 he has finally realised what his life is missing: a wife.

In the past the Mr Selfridge star has paraded a succession of pliant popsies to parties but now he has vowed to stop working so hard and find a permanent partner.

“I want a wife and a family,” he says.

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Jeremy Piven out the find a wife

“My alibi is my CV. I have never stopped working. But there’s no balance in my life, my plan this year is to do something about it.”

Manhattan-born Piven admits finding his ideal mate could be tricky.

“Where do you really meet someone? I don’t think I’m necessarily going to find someone at a party.”

Aspiring partners should be warned that Jeremy can be “arrogant”, at least according to writer Sarah Tressler who said in an interview that her nights with him had been less than magical.

She complained that he took her clothes off in a way that was “awkward and mundane... he was not that memorable or very good”.

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CHRISTMAS QUIZ ANSWERS:

My sack was bulging with entries for the column’s Christmas Quiz. There were many who had all the right answers but the fi rst to be drawn from my top hat was Susan Labrum, from Grantham in Lincolnshire. The champagne is on its way to you, madam!

Just make sure you raise a glass to this column’s wacky world of narcissistic actors, navel-revealing starlets and priapic politicians. This year I will continue the diarists’ duty – to treat the frivolous things in life seriously and the serious things frivolously.